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Video: Deaf Boy Hears Father’s Voice for First Time

byJudy DuttonJun 21, 2013

Grayson Clamp was born deaf.
But now, at age 3, he underwent a new surgery that allowed him to hear. The
first words he heard? “Daddy loves you,” father Len Clamp told him,
simultaneously signing the words to make sure his son understood. The boy’s
reaction—one of stunned delight—is so precious the video has since gone viral.

Grayson was born lacking
cochlear nerves, which carry sounds from the inner ear to the brain. To fix
this problem, he received a brainstem implant the University of North Carolina
in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, led by head and neck surgeon Craig Buchman. Grayson
was one of the first children to undergo this new surgery, which is already
used in adults. And so far he is loving the results.

“Never one time did he show any fear about that new
sensation,” says Len, who'd adopted Grayson with his wife Nicole in 2010. “It was a lot more excitement. And he’s really curious to
begin with.” Since then, he’s fallen in love with music. “He claps his hands, he bobs his head. At his day care, they have
a stereo, and he loves to run over and turn it on.” Grayson is now working with
a speech therapist, but still has a long way to go to catch up with his peers.

Looking back, Len admits he
pondered for weeks what his son's first heard words should be. “Honestly, when
we got to that moment I still hadn’t decided. I just think it was sort of a
spontaneous parental instinct for me to say ‘Daddy loves you,’” he admits. “I
thought that would be just the most fitting thing to say.”